SMART DIGITAL MARKETING ESSENTIALS FOR THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS

Despite feeling like July was only yesterday, we are now well into the lead up to the holiday season. Reading this blog, you might only now be thinking about your marketing and campaigns for the silly season. Stressed yet? You should be!

8/10 holiday shoppers say that online activities influenced their purchases. This means your web presence and digital marketing initiatives could be a real make or break for your success through December and January, when sales are notoriously slow for most industries. Even more challenging is the fact that people report starting their Christmas shopping as early as September!

Got your blood pressure up now? Great! Because now we’re going to talk about how we can remedy this anxiety with some effective tactics and mindful decision making.

1 – FIND OUT WHERE YOUR AUDIENCE ACTUALLY IS, AND BUILD AROUND THAT

The reason we favour Facebook Advertising as a conversion tool is because it offers so much in terms of audience discovery and targeting. In terms of volume, Facebook leads all social media platforms, meaning you are more likely to find your demographic here. Because Facebook is a ‘Pay to play’ platform (Translation: Paid ads reach audiences, organic content you simply post only reaches certain people), they offer some great free tools, such as the Facebook Audience Insights, which can offer volume estimates and similar interests.

This doesn’t mean you should exclude the niches found elsewhere – Instagram favours a younger audience and performs well for visual brands, while Pinterest is a top performer for older demographics seeking brands that look beautiful and can solve a certain problem.

Something our content team sees a lot with new clients is the belief that anything is better than nothing at all on social media. This is true, to a degree – An active social media account like Instagram can assist in establishing trust, and learning more about a brand so sub par content does have a role to play. But when you make the decision that ‘good enough’ is your new strategy, you’re potentially polarising a lot of new audience members who hope you’re The One.

Posting average blog posts and grainy, gloomy photos is a bit like speed dating in your wine stained trackies. You’re not letting first impressions reflect your true value! Take a little more time to fix your lighting, arrange your product, and consider your copy. Likewise, take time to go over your website and view it through the eyes of a potential customer or client. Can they easily find the menu? Do they know what’s on sale? Can they easily check out with their purchase? All these seemingly small parts can be what books out a restaurant, fills a shopping cart, or floods your enquiry inbox.

3 – ONE TOUCH IS NEVER ENOUGH

The average Australian views over 10,000 forms of advertisement a day. How is your single view meant to stand up against that storm? If you think that one touch marketing is enough to pull your audience into a conversion, you’re not looking at the big picture.

Remarketing tactics are brilliant for multi touch follow ups. Effective across most stages in the conversion funnel, retargeting is the art of presenting yourself again, to an audience who have done something on your website or social platforms – landed on your sales page, for instance. Advanced retargeting gets even more personalised, reminding the user of the items left in their basket, or even making them a discount offer. We usually see a higher conversion rate on retargeting advertisements because we know that user has an interest in making a purchase or enquiry. We’re simply cutting through those 9,999 other advertisements to remind them why they wanted it!

Likewise, retargeting is perfect for those who have made a purchase or visited you in the past. We utilise a range of platforms, like Facebook, Google Ads and Email Direct Marketing to remind previous purchasers just how great their experience was, and why they should come back for more – Essentialduring the holiday rush, when time is short and the mind is busy!

While an earlier boat may have been missed for holiday marketing, the flexibility and instantaneous nature of digital marketing means it’s not too late to get cracking with a superb November run up. Reach out to us today to discuss your brand’s needs, and how we can make this the best holiday season for you yet.